Saturday, August 25, 2007

CNN's "God's Warriors"....OT

Sometimes, television lives up to its promise of bringing us important news and information. So it was with "God's Warriors" which aired on CNN over three evenings earlier this week. Christiane Amanpour's documentary covered some of the issues swirling around fundamentalism in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian religious movements.

Now, I'm not going to get into a critique of the production. I'll leave that to other sources. But if you haven't seen this, I urge you to do so. You may find much that is disagreeable. You may discover some sympathetic views of other religious groups.

I'll paraphrase one thought, and that's the idea that fundamentalists believe they are on a mission from God. And since God cannot be wrong, neither can they be wrong. This justifies suicide bombers, abortion clinic bombers, and terrorism that targets children.

2 Comments:

One of the things I'm constantly reminded of, however, is that my understanding of God could very well be incorrect. I probably fit the definition of a fundamentalist, and one of the characteristics of a "godly" person is humility.

Remember always that it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, and the noisy loudmouths who get all of the attention. Christianity (and Judaism and Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism and Atheism and all the rest...) cannot be defined just by the actions of the lunatic fringe and the enthusiastic activists.

I would highly recommend: "What terrorists want : understanding the enemy, containing the threat" by Louise Richardson. (New York : Random House, 2006, ISBN: 1400064813). Book is available at many fine libraries including: OkC Metropolitan Library System or OkC National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.